Concurrency of powers is a key to governance in most federal systems. This volume, Concurrent Powers in Federal Systems: Meaning, Making and Managing, is the first to examine from a comparative perspective its various manifestations, reasons for emergence, and management strategies.

What happens when UNESCO heritage conventions are ratified by a state? How do UNESCO’s global efforts interact with preexisting local, regional and state efforts to conserve or promote culture? What new institutions emerge to address the mandate? The contributors to this volume focus on the work of translation and interpretation that ensues once heritage conventions are ratified and implemented. With seventeen case studies from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and China, the volume provides comparative evidence for the divergent heritage regimes generated in states that differ in history and political organization. The cases illustrate how UNESCO’s aspiration to honor and celebrate cultural diversity diversifies itself. The very effort to adopt a global heritage regime forces myriad adaptations to particular state and interstate modalities of building and managing heritage.

A new examination of contemporary federalism and federation, which delivers a detailed theoretical study underpinned by fresh case studies. It is grounded in a clear distinction between 'federations', particular kinds of states, and 'federalism', the thinking that drives and promotes them. It also details the origins, formation, evolution and operations of federal political interests, through an authoritative series of chapters that: analyze the conceptual bases of federalism and federation through the evolution of the intellectual debate on federalism; the American Federal experience; the origins of federal states; and the relationship between state-building and national integration explore comparative federalism and federation by looking at five main pathways into comparative analysis with empirical studies on the US, Canada, Australia, India, Malaysia, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the EU explore the pathology of federations, looking at failures and successes, the impact of globalization. The final chapter also presents a definitive assessment of federal theory. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of federalism, devolution, comparative politics and government.

This century has seen the continuation of long-term trends in the movement of the territorial boundaries of nation states alongside the emergence of new tensions. The repercussions of the Scottish referendum and the heightened urgency of the Catalonia question along with the continued economic problems faced by the Eurozone have given new energy and context to debates on institutional and fiscal autonomy. Assessing the impact of increasing calls for wider fiscal autonomy in the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Italy and the USA this volume updates and adds significant new context to the debate. Framing the discussion on fiscal autonomy and drawing out ethical considerations it portrays the problems connected with the devolution of responsibilities and financial resources to sections of the population, sometimes content to be part of a lower layer of government, sometimes aspiring to an asymmetrical position or total independence.

American, European, political, and theological histories intersect in this important new exploration of the founding of the United States. The Covenant Connection examines the way in which the Protestant Reformation and federal covenant theology, which lay at the foundation of Reformed Protestantism in its Calvinist version, played a major role in shaping the political life and ideas of the colonies of British North America and ultimately the new United States of America. Contributors to the volume look at the most critical facets of this connection over nearly three centuries, from the beginning of the Reformation in sixteenth-century Zurich to the declaration of American independence and the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Individual chapters show how federal theology led to a revival of Biblical republicanism in Reformation Europe; how it was applied and modified in countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, Scotland, and England; and how it was carried across the Atlantic by the early settlers of North Americamost particularly the Puritans but also other groups such as the Dutch and the Scottishto form the matrix for American constitutionalism, democratic republicanism, and federalism. As a collection, The Covenant Connection provides an irrefutable analysis of the profound biblical and Reformation influences on the founding of America.

The design of intergovernmental fiscal transfers has a strong bearing on efficiency and equity of public service provision and accountable local governance. This book provides a comprehensive one-stop window/source of materials to guide practitioners and scholars on design and worldwide practices in intergovernmental fiscal transfers and their implications for efficiency, and equity in public services provision as well as accountable governance.

The three forces of democratization, decentralization, and development have swept the world over the last decade and redrawn the maps of politics, power, and prosperity. Modern Mexico has been fully engaged in the trio, making it a rich case study. In recent years, enhanced political competition has redistributed decisionmaking across all levels of government, making the government more accountable to the average citizen. It has also given subnational governments a renewed role as economic agents. The taxation, spending, borrowing, and institutions of Mexican states and municipalities are now increasingly under the rigor of market discipline. The combined, closer scrutiny of voters and financiers is creating a new incentive framework for policymakers-a framework where necessary reforms become both inescapable and, more importantly, a perceived source of potential reward. This book is the product of the analytical work of a large number of experts, Mexican and foreign. In the book, the experts document Mexico's decentralization experience; conceptualize its main trends, policies, and options; and bring it into the light of international comparison. They distill critical lessons and challenges that are of relevance for Mexico, for Latin America and, generally, for countries that are embarking on far reaching decentralization efforts. This renders the volume a major contribution to our knowledge and thinking in this area; and a timely one, since decentralization is an irreversible process that is likely to continue occupying policymakers for years to come.

Although it is one of very few countries in Europe that has chosen to remain outside the EU, Switzerland is closely integrated with the Union. Two sets of recently negotiated bilateral sectoral agreements provide further integration. This study analyzes the functioning of the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the EU, focusing on the agreements that entered into force in 2002. Particular attention is paid to the institutional arrangements and their ability to adapt to new legal and political developments in the EU, the impact on the functioning of Swiss democracy, and how the Swiss political system affects the implementation of the agreements. Comparison is also made with the experiences of the European Economic Area, the only arrangement for integration without membership that is more extensive than the Swiss model. The study concludes with an assessment of the prospects for EU-Swiss relations.

Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

As new federations take shape and old ones are revived around the world, a difficult challenge is to create incentives for fiscal discipline. By combining theory, quantitative analysis, and historical and contemporary case studies, this book lays out the first systematic explanation of why decentralized countries have had dramatically different fiscal experiences. It provides insights into current policy debates from Latin America to the European Union, and a new perspective on a tension between the promise and peril of federalism that has characterized the literature since The Federalist Papers.

Contributors provide a fascinating account of how federal countries are confronting the traditional challenges of conflicts over division of fiscal powers while also coping with emerging challenges of globalization and citizen empowerment arising from the information revolution. They analyze how relationships and roles in different orders of government are being reshaped and show how local solutions inspired by global principles help strengthen government accountability and improve the quality of life for citizens.

How do Russian leaders balance the need to decentralize governance in a socially and politically complex country with the need to guarantee political control of the state? Since the early 2000s Russian federal authorities have arranged a system of political control on regional elites and their leaders, providing a "police control" of special bodies subordinated by the federal center on policy implementation in the regions. Different mechanisms of fiscal federalism and investment policy have been used to ensure regional elites’ loyalty and a politically centralized but administratively decentralized system has been created. Asking clear, direct, and theoretically informed questions about the relationship between federalism, decentralization and authoritarianism, this book explores the political survival of authoritarian leaders, the determinants of policy formulation, and theories of federalism and decentralization, to reach a new understanding of territorial governance in contemporary Russia. As such, it is an important work for students and researchers in Russian studies and regional and federal studies.
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